Nice to hear from you Dennis. I did send you a PM a while back, not sure if you got it.

Maybe I'm slow, but I just figured out the meaning of your avatar and I love it! (Did you happen to read the article on Palin found in the New York magazine? Awesome and insightful!)

Dennis, to get it on topic again, let me say again, you wrote a damn good Star Trek episode, the Tressaurian Intersection. It is so good, so captivating and so wide open ... I still can't figure out how it will end. Heck, I can't even figure out how that shuttlecraft is going to distract a dozen ships! Kudos to you for drafting such an incredibly compelling Trek story.

Actually, I think it is a testament to how much people like Exeter that the end of the story hasn't been revealed in all this time. It isn't as though a ton of people haven't already seen it (in rough cut form) or read the script (back in 2004) or saw the filming of most of it (again, back in 2004).

Even with people making calls to release the segments before they are ready during all this time, I don't think I recall anyone asking (directly) what happens at the end. I think that is quite cool!

I know most people will disagree with this (not having seen the full film) but I remarked to Dennis a few years back that the delayed release schedule has actually increased the impact of the story.

Of course that was just before the release of the third segment and I had no idea that the final segment was going to take this long to finish... but I'm still glad that the original schedule was flushed out an airlock!

We promote Vandi Richards to Captain of Starfleet's flagship on the basis of a week's service about Exeter.

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Is that a week of real time? Or a week of Exeter time?

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Geez Louise, a week of Exeter time... is that like traveling at 999/1000 the speed of light? Only a week goes by on the ship, but the rest of us go through three generations? Or is it the other way around... that only a week goes by on earth, but the ship passes through a lifetime of experience?

Frankly, I miss the longer version of the scene between Richards and Garrovick. I know there were problems with it, but I think the overlong Captain's Log that replaced it was a poor choice.

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Really?

When I saw the episode all the way through, that scene was one that I told both Jimm and Dennis that it had a chilling effect on the remainder of the episode. Richards was to seem annoying to Garrovick because she was under foot... but the character as filmed/acted was running dangerously close (actually, crossed the line) to being annoying to the audience. The role of the editor is to protect the story and the characters, even if it is protecting them from themselves.

I think the editing out of many of Richards more annoying aspects makes her a more endearing character in the episode. And the same thing could be said about how both Harris and Cutty were dealt with in editing as well.

I may not know anything about the movie/television business, but from what I gather writers over write stories on the page, directors attempt to get as much footage as possible in the can, and editors attempt to carve out the final work from all that excess.

The hardest rule to follow in creative endeavors like this is: less is more.

Exeter may not be the fastest fan film to be released, but I sure can't fault most of the editing choices made so far.

There was a way to save the scene without paring it back so much. I remember writing out a proposed rearrangement back before I had Final Cut (otherwise I'd have offered to take a crack at editing it). Part of it was just re-arranging some of the conversation to flow better. Having the actress loop a couple of Richard's lines to get a different tone would have helped a lot, too. The problem I have with the scene as is that it feels truncated, and the endless Captain's Log is out of character with the TOS style that the production was aiming for.